


Grief

by Peanut_Butter_writes



Series: The Stages of Grief [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mirror of Erised, Old Man Steve Rogers, Post-Endgame, Unrequited Stucky, fuck jkr and terfs fuck off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29595762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peanut_Butter_writes/pseuds/Peanut_Butter_writes
Summary: Bucky and Steve encounter a strange mirror.Part 4 of a 5 part series where I write my way through the stages of grief over Stucky's lack of ending in Endgame. None of the fics are set in the same universe.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: The Stages of Grief [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1455412
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Grief: Bucky's desires and Steve's desire's don't align.

Bucky shouldn’t have been surprised that even as an old man, Steve couldn’t stop getting into trouble.

He had memories of Steve getting into fights in back alleys and seldom-used side streets back before the war. Clear among those, he remembered the many times he had had to scare off Steve’s attackers, much to Steve’s chagrin. 

Apparently, history was prone to repeating itself. 

Steve had told Bucky that he would retire and live out the rest of his life quietly. He’d passed the mantle of Captain America to Sam, along with all of the responsibilities that came with it. He wasn’t Cap anymore - just Steve Rogers, and an old Steve Rogers at that. He should be living in a spacious apartment in Florida or California, with no mortal enemies except Deborah from Friday Night Bingo. 

Who even knew that Hydra still had hidden bases in New York? Or that they’d still be taking special interest in Steve? The man was almost two hundred years old, counting the time that had passed in the ice. He deserved a break, dammit. But Hydra didn’t seem to care about allowing him to cash in his senior citizen exemption from the super soldier life. 

That is how Bucky found himself with Steve once more, running through a grey hallway off an industrial complex Hydra had commandeered. He could hear the rapid footsteps of the Hydra agents who he knew were around a corner a scant fifty metres behind him and see Steve sprinting as fast as his old man legs could carry him in front of him, which was faster than Bucky would have expected. 

“This is a dead end,” Steve called out. He was right. It wasn’t long until the hallway came to an end and Hydra would catch up with them. This was going nowhere. They needed to go somewhere else. 

“Here,” Bucky called, and ducked down an offshoot. Another grey hallway, very long, with multiple rooms leading off it. He tried the door on the nearest one. Thankfully, it was unlocked. He opened it and ushered Steve in, before closing the door soundlessly and locking them both inside. 

They leaned against the wall, silent except for their heavy breathing. After a few steadying breaths and with nothing better to do, Bucky took the opportunity to look around. The room was about the size of Bucky’s bedroom growing up, and had a low ceiling and the only source of light was one flickering incandescent bulb. No one was there except for himself and Steve. There were no objects aside from a tall, large mirror, ornately framed in gold and standing on two clawed feet. Surely it was important or powerful in some sense to warrant Hydra’s attention, and beyond that, it’s own room. Intrigued, Bucky walked over to examine it. 

What he saw in the mirror made his blood chill. That was impossible. Immediately, he turned around - but no, nothing in the room had changed. The mirror simply showed a different image. In the mirror, Bucky saw himself, but that was where the similarity ended. 

His reflection was in a field. In the distance, he could see his goat herd grazing. It looked like he was back in Wakanda. The sky was blue and the few clouds were fluffy and white. It was tranquil. That had been the best part of Wakanda - getting over Hydra’s mind control had been excruciating, but the environment he’d had to do it in was the best he could hope for. While that part of the display was all well and good, it wasn’t the part of the image in the mirror Bucky was focusing on. 

Behind Bucky’s reflection was Steve - not old, like the Steve still resting against the wall, but as he had looked before leaving to return the Infinity Stones, young and smooth-skinned and blond and muscular. And there were other reasons this Steve couldn’t be the same as the other, beyond appearance. This Steve had his arms around Bucky’s waist and was resting his chin on his shoulder. He was holding Bucky very close to him. He was smiling, and so was mirror-Bucky. As Bucky watched, Steve nuzzled his cheek with his nose and gently kissed it. The Bucky in the mirror turned his head and caught Steve’s lips in his own. 

As Bucky looked at the mirror longer and longer, he noticed more details. He noticed how they seemed so comfortable with each other, like somehow in this mirror-world, they’d been together like that for a while. He noticed how his left arm was real, flesh and blood. He wondered if that meant that Hydra had never captured him in that world. What his eyes finally rested on, though, were the matching rings on their left hands. 

Of course Bucky knew that he’d loved Steve. Long before the war, he’d had to remind himself to hide the nagging, ever-growing feelings that Steve clearly didn’t reciprocate. No matter how hard he’d tried to move on, he just fell more and more in love. How could he not? Small, adorable, always-ready-to-fight Steve. Then, extremely attractive, muscular Steve who had freed him from Hydra’s mind control. Then, Steve who was willing to choose Bucky over the Avengers, or even the law. Who wouldn’t have been in love with him? 

When Steve told him he was going to stay in the past with Peggy after returning the Infinity Stones, it had broken his heart. All of their time together - everything they’d given each other over the years - for nothing. Steve had been content to live his life without Bucky. Of course, the more mature part of him was glad that Steve was pursuing what would make him happy - the curse of love, he supposed, that the happiness of the target of one’s affection was worth more than one’s own happiness - but another, probably selfish part of him had hoped that Steve might change his mind. Even up to the moment Steve had disappeared from the platform, he had hoped that there was some part of Steve that would have regrets and second-guess his choice. He had been wrong. One moment Steve was on the platform, and the next Bruce was trying to bring him back and he wasn’t coming back, and Bucky knew that he wouldn’t ever come back to that platform - to him. To his best friend. And even if he had come back and Bucky never confessed, he would have relished spending time with Steve anyway. He had for years already. It would have been enough. 

He remembered the times when they were young children, and one of them had stayed at the others house too late and then called home to ask if he could stay the night. He remembered them challenging themselves to stay up until the little clock on the bedside table hit the twelve o’clock mark. They would talk their way to midnight, promising to be friends forever, even when they were as old as their grandparents. _How perfectly that plan had turned out_ , Bucky thought bitterly. 

After the platform, he’d gone home and sobbed in bed for hours. By the time he had finally cried himself dry and had thought about all of his options, he decided that if he was here, there was a reason. If he was here without Steve at his side, then maybe it wasn’t Steve he was meant to be beside. Maybe he was needed as a companion not to Steve Rogers, but to Captain America, even if that meant Sam now instead. After all, there was no hope that he would get the fairytale ending with Steve he had wanted, but there was a world that he could help. He resolved to finally let him go. 

The image in the mirror made it crystal-clear that he had failed that, too. 

What was this mirror? What did it show? Was it meant to taunt you with what you could never have, and drive you insane? And the message engraved along the top - erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi - what the hell could that mean? Probably, it was some clue about the mirror, but without a way of deciphering it it was useless to Bucky. Did it show what you wanted, or did it sadistically show what you could have had if you’d made different choices? Bucky ruled out the latter fairly quickly. Their clothing was of a more modern day style and yet Bucky’s arm was his own. Those two things couldn’t exist together. 

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the kissing figures in the mirror. He concluded that whatever this world in the mirror was, it _was_ everything Bucky had wanted for, as long as he could remember. In the mirror’s world there was no Hydra, no Thanos, no Infinity Stones. Steve was with him. They were in love. Hell, they were _married_. It was cruel to show him this when it was so unrealistic. It could never happen. And Bucky knew that. But the mirror seemed to want him to believe it anyway. Would he ever be able to let go of him?

“Buck? I think they’re gone. Let’s go,” Steve said quietly, beckoning him back over to the door. That sent another round of questions through Bucky’s mind - would Steve see the same thing? Or would the mirror show him something else? Maybe they could figure out what the reflection meant. 

“Just a second. Come here,” Bucky replied. Steve came over. “Look in the mirror. Tell me what you see,” he instructed, shifting out of the frame. 

Steve gave the mirror a long, hard look before he turned back to Bucky, confused. 

“What do you mean, Bucky? It’s just a regular mirror.”

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry for the wait - I had forgotten that I already had this one written, and had pretty much since Endgame lol. The next and final installment of this series is mostly written too, but my vision for it had changed since I first wrote it and I just have to find the time to edit it. I'm hoping to have it out before the premier of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though, since it will definitely be my take on Sam and Bucky's partnership and I want it out before I have to compare it to the direction the show goes.


End file.
